Carys Cragg was just 11 years old when an intruder broke into her parents’ home and brutally murdered her father.

Now, 25 years later, his convicted killer, Sheldon Klatt, has been granted full parole.

But instead of being angry, Cragg is at peace with Klatt’s freedom.

In fact, Cragg began corresponding with Klatt in prison six years ago and has taken what she has learned in those communications to write a book, Dead Reckoning: How I Came to Meet the Man Who Murdered My Father.

“I’m really satisfied that he was granted full parole. It’s been a long, gradual release,” Cragg told Postmedia on Friday.

“Now it’s over, or at least that’s what it feels like,” she said.

“I think letting him out continues to let him move forward.”

Cragg exchanged letters with the killer for about two years, eventually meeting with Klatt in Drumheller Institution in September 2012.

What surprised her was how little he knew about her father, who was a revered member of the community when he was murdered.

Dr. Geoffrey Cragg was slain in his University Heights home in Calgary on Sept. 16, 1992, when Klatt climbed through a kitchen window to burglarize the residence.

Cragg woke up upon hearing Klatt. A confrontation ensued and the doctor was repeatedly stabbed by the killer, who was convicted of second-degree murder in the slaying.

Carys Cragg said she decided to reach out to Klatt to find out more about the man who took her father from her.

“I wanted to basically confront this ghost, I wanted to make him real, I wanted to know him and not assume things about him,” she said, in a phone interview from Vancouver.

“He didn’t know anything about my dad … and I found that devastating, because of course we had such a great loss of this wonderful man,” Cragg said.

“He knew nothing about what he took away.”

She said Klatt couldn’t appreciate the gravity of her loss “because he never had caring people around him.”

“So how could he understand the significance of who my dad was, when these people were just awful to him his whole life?”

In a way, Cragg said, her father helped turn Klatt’s life around.

“He was on a destructive path and my dad got in his way … someone needed to stop him and I guess it was my dad, with his life,” Cragg said.

Klatt, 22 at the time of the murder, was sentenced to life in prison without full parole for a minimum 25 years.

At his trial, Klatt claimed his innocence, stating his friend, Mike Wintemute, who it turned out had an airtight alibi, was with him during the break-in and was actually Dr. Cragg’s killer.

“This is a tragedy,” he said, following his conviction.

“I believe there’s a man out there that has ruined two lives.”

One of the things Cragg learned in her conversations with Klatt was why he continued to deny his guilt throughout the criminal proceedings.

“It was rooted in shame, he didn’t want to be the guy who killed such a significant man,” she said.

Cragg said her book about Klatt is not about happy endings. She stopped corresponding after two years because she learned what she needed to know and they haven’t become friends.

Their meeting in Drumheller, 20 years after the murder, helped her learn who Klatt was in the months leading up to the slaying and what he became afterwards.

“He just became even more of a person,” she said.

“He thought that I would think of him as a monster and I just thought of him as a ghost.

“When I saw him I was like, ‘oh, you’re afraid of me’ … and he told me that, that he was basically afraid of me,” she said.

“I thought, ‘well isn’t that interesting that he’s afraid of his victim’s daughter, but not the murderer next door in the prison.’”

She said while she wasn’t sure what it would be like meeting the man who murdered her dad, she came away satisfied.

“I felt incredibly peaceful after,” Cragg said.

And she said while she is content that Klatt has completed his punishment and is ready for freedom, she has no intention of forgiving him for what he did.

“My problem with forgiveness is, what are you sorry for? Are you sorry for coming to my house? Are you sorry for looking in my window? Are you sorry for lying? Are you sorry for not turning yourself in? Like what, are you sorry?” she said.

“Until I hear a genuine outline of what you’re sorry about, then I don’t really see what the forgiveness exchange is about.”

She said his admission was far more important than an apology.

“Telling the truth about what happened to me, that was more important, for him to say ‘yes, I did do it, this is why I lied about it and this is what I did wrong.’”